Activities
Door knocking and phone calling — choose who to reach, decide what to ask, assign your team, and record every conversation.
An activity is a piece of canvassing: a list of people to visit or call, the questions to ask them, and the people assigned to it. Each conversation is recorded against the person, so what you learn stays with them after the activity ends.
Creating an activity
From Activities, or from the Activities tab of a campaign, choose New activity and set:
- Name and type. Door knocking or phone calling. The type decides which opt-out applies: people who have opted out of visits are left out of door knocking, and people who have opted out of calls are left out of phone calling. Anyone marked no contact at all is left out of both.
- Campaign. Optional. Linking one groups the activity with that campaign's deliveries and hoardings. It starts on your newest open campaign, so choose No campaign if this one stands alone.
- Start and end dates. Optional. An activity stays open until you close it, whatever the dates say.
- Audience. Built from the same filter as People.
- Fixed takes whoever matches now and keeps that list. With no conditions it takes everyone the workspace can see.
- Dynamic follows the filter, so people who start or stop matching join or leave as you go.
- Try no answers again. Ticked, people come back to the list a day after a no answer. Untick it for a single pass, where a no answer finishes them. Changing it later applies from then on.
- Questions to ask. The custom fields your team should fill in.
- Tags, contact details and opt-outs your team may change. Anything you don't select stays read-only for them.
- Instructions or script. Shown to whoever is working the activity.
- Assign to. Organisation members with access to this workspace.
Assignees need an account
Unlike a delivery, an activity isn't worked from an emailed link. The person recording conversations signs in, which is what lets Prenso show them only the people and fields the activity covers.
Working an activity
Activities shows assignees the open activities they are on, and shows managers all of them. Open one to see who is left. On a phone, the list becomes one card per person.
Choose Record visit or Call on a person, then record:
- Channel. Set by the activity's type. Change it if you reached them another way, such as by text.
- Outcome — contacted, no answer, refused, inaccessible, moved away, deceased, or wrong number. The list follows the channel: a door knock can't have a wrong number, and a call can't be inaccessible.
- Answers to the activity's questions, and any tags. These appear once the outcome is Contacted.
- Contact details you were allowed to change.
- Notes on the conversation.
A no answer brings the person back to the list a day later, unless the activity is set not to. Any other outcome finishes them.
Everything recorded appears on the person's page, in both their interactions and their history.
Making calls
The dialog shows the person's mobile and landline; tap one to dial it. A phone activity's list refreshes every 15 seconds, so callers can see each other's progress.
Choosing Call claims the person for ten minutes, so two callers don't ring the same number. It isn't available for anyone another caller is holding, anyone who is finished, or anyone tried recently and not yet due again. The hold renews while the dialog is open, and closing it without saving lets the person go.
The claim covers the household: everyone else in the activity at the same address, unless another caller already holds them, so a shared landline isn't rung twice. An address with more than 12 people in the activity, such as a rest home, counts as a building and its people are called one by one.
After you save, Others at this address lists the people claimed with the call. Choose Call to ring one next, or tick them and record the same outcome for them. Only the outcome carries over; answers, notes, and contact details stay with the person who gave them. Anyone you don't record goes back on the list when you choose Done.
Visits don't hold anyone, since canvassers often work a street in pairs with the list open.
Changing an activity
Managers can Edit an activity at any time: rename it, change its questions, reassign it, or move it to another campaign. For a dynamic audience you edit the filter. For a fixed one you can add people who match a filter, and remove or restore individuals from the list.
Close activity stops further recording and takes it off assignees' lists, without losing anything. Reopen it if you closed it early.
For a dynamic activity, Show audience on map opens Explore with exactly the people it covers.
Limits
Open activities count against your plan's per-workspace limit: 2 on Starter, 10 on Pro, 50 on Business, unlimited on Enterprise. Closed activities don't count, so closing one frees a place.